Fireside chats in the 21st century

Now that Obama has won the US election decisively, it's a good time to look at his new media strategy and how he plans to keep that strategy moving.

Firstly, Obama not only raised far more money via the internet, he also spent far more than McCain on it. This approach clearly paid off, with Obama's support amongst younger voters much higher than the GOP. McCain's campaign relied more on broadcast media. McCain also had to deal with a more problematic spending plan - while Obama was able to simply spend the money on the larger campaign, McCain and the RNC had to split the money amongst the presidential campaign and the endangered Senate seats.

Even Fox News, a key part of the Republican noise machine, went cold on the Republican campaign with owner Rupert Murdoch coming out in support of Obama. The divisive tactics of Rush Limbaugh and the right wing blogosphere failed to make much of a dent, and their hyperventilating desperation certainly did them no favours. The right wing press is slowly collapsing, with 'wingnut welfare' funders pulling out and dubious bulk-ordering scams being made public. Cable is feeling the swing too, with left-wing firebrand Keith Olbermann outrating right-wing firebrand O'Reilly for the first time.

Social media and Australian politics

Over this side of the pond politicians are still a bit behind the US. The Greens are continuing their pre-election strategy of using blogs and Twitter to reach out to constituents, and Senator Scott Ludlam has used Twitter and the Greensblog to draw on the expertise of technical experts, web developers and IT specialists on the absolutely inane Internet censorshipproposal.